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I hate having to scroll past tons of old defunct superstars, playtests, prerelease discussions, design forums, alpha junk, and then more defunct playtests, just to get to stuff that people actually still want to talk about. Please move all of the Paizo Licensed Products, Older Products, Dragon Magazine, Dungeon Magazine, Online Campaigns, Gaming, Gamer Life, and Paizo Community above RPG Superstar.
You can move the current year's Superstar to the very top if you want, I don't care. I just think that you're doing the community a disservice by taking things that are still worth talking about, and burying them below stuff that isn't.
Huh. That works! And yet my suggestion stands, because this is a really annoying process just to get active fora to where they're more accessible. Maybe it's just me, but I doubt it.
It's still a lot of them to be visible by default. Especially with posts from each listed. Maybe collapse any forum that hasn't had a post in the last month?
Depending on how long ago you hid the forums, however, it might have been easier then. They've eliminated the arrows next to the overarching categories so you can't close, say, "Online Campaigns" all at once; you have to close "Recruitment," "Play-by-Post," and "Play-by-Post Discussion" separately now. It adds up.
Really? Which triangle did you click? Maybe it's my browser....
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Ah ha! If the other forums are already collapsed you get the one for the Online Campaigns. When I uncollapsed the Online Campaigns it just gave me the other three already collapsed. If uncollapsed one of those I could no longer just do Online Campaigns and first had to recollapse the other ones.
So while I don't think its necessary to automatically have the forums collapse it would be nice to have the option to completely collapse a section without having to collapse all the subforums first.
Ah ha! If the other forums are already collapsed you get the one for the Online Campaigns. When I uncollapsed the Online Campaigns it just gave me the other three already collapsed. If uncollapsed one of those I could no longer just do Online Campaigns and first had to recollapse the other ones.
So while I don't think its necessary to automatically have the forums collapse it would be nice to have the option to completely collapse a section without having to collapse all the subforums first.
Yes, that is consistent with my experimentation. At a minimum, it would be helpful to make it so that you could collapse a whole category without having to collapse each sub-forum first.
And yet I still stand by my original suggestion, since at the moment, only messageboard grognards have easy access to the still-active fora.
ETA: I see some skepticism about the cost of changing things around. One of my many past careers was as a support programmer for a database-driven client-server application. The reason why I didn't address the question of the resources involved in moving the active fora above the inactive ones is because it's relatively trivial. One person spends some time moving things around, so that many people don't have to.
It's not just one triangle. Under the "paizo.com" heading, for example, there are 3 sub-triangles: Customer Service, Product Discussion, and Website Feedback. Used to, before the site redesign, when we had all the nested boxes, you could just click a triangle next to "paizo.com" and close all of them. Now, if they're all open (which I believe they are by default), you have to click each subforum separately to close them; you can't close the whole category with one click.
It takes a grognard to click a triangle?
That depends. Are you trying to be "witty intertubes sarcastic guy" or "savvy web designer guy"? There is a difference. Choose one.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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It takes a grognard to click a triangle?That depends. Are you trying to be "witty intertubes sarcastic guy" or "savvy web designer guy"? There is a difference. Choose one.
I am "confused forum guy".
I'm confused because the triangle seems like a pretty simple control to use. Why do you feel it takes some special expertise or depth of experience to use it?
I am "confused forum guy".
I'm confused because the triangle seems like a pretty simple control to use. Why do you feel it takes some special expertise or depth of experience to use it?
Just to be absolutely clear -- they're talking about wanting to close a whole category at once (e.g. Gamer Life), not a particular subforum (e.g. Gamer Talk, Books, Comics). By default, there's a triangle for the latter, but not the former (at least in IE). So saying "click on the triangle" doesn't work for closing all of Gamer Life because there is no triangle -- at least not until you click the individual triangles for the Gamer Talk, Books, Comics, Movies, Music & Audio, Technology, Television, and Video Games subforums. Once upon a time, there used to be triangles for the larger categories regardless of whether the subforums were collapsed, but not any more.
You probably know all of this already, but I wasn't quite sure based on your brief response.
Weird, I can still close "Online Campaigns" all at once. To reopen it and close it took about 5 seconds.
Again, just to clarify -- are you saying you were able to close all of "Online Campaigns" even though some of the subforums were not collapsed?
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Yeah, I like the new interface, but miss the ability to mass collapse sections.
Mostly I was commenting on his suggestion that it was somehow the realm of grognards. It is a little more time consuming but hardly something requiring years of experience on the forums.
Mostly I was commenting on his suggestion that it was somehow the realm of grognards. It is a little more time consuming but hardly something requiring years of experience on the forums.
I believe the reference was to the fact that those who have been here a while collapsed the fora they weren't interested in when they were easy to collapse, whereas the newbies are confronted with a mass of little triangles to hunt and click since most of the fora default to open. Has nothing to do with experience, just with adjusting the messageboards to our liking when it was easier to do so.
Mostly I was commenting on his suggestion that it was somehow the realm of grognards. It is a little more time consuming but hardly something requiring years of experience on the forums.
As Joana noted, the point isn't that it "requires years of experience", just that there was a handy shortcut in Ye Olde Days.
Actually, I was referring to how people like me don't care at all about the technical details of a board's mechanics. We just want to talk to people. Savvy web designers make that easier, since we're really not that small of a percentage. More likely the majority.
When I described someone who has easy access to still-active fora as a "grognard", I meant that in the sense of having specialized knowledge and expertise, not in terms of raw years of experience. (Apologies if I misused the term.) I've been here quite some time; and yet, as you can see from above, I never even noticed the triangles and their purpose until they were pointed out by a paid professional.
Smart web design works around people like me instead of demanding that it work the other way around. That's why I started this thread: to bring attention to the fact that I exist -- and if I do, then so do countless others who are like me but moreso and would never post something like this, because they're not even that experienced and assertive.